Classroom assessment practices are greatly influenced by national and local policies on assessment. Typically, these include accountability requirements for schools to evidence and report their students' learning in the form of specific learning outcomes, calibrated against national benchmark standards of achievement and progression. An…

We have known for a long time that a relationship exists between how learning is assessed and the learning processes and strategies students employ when engaged in those assessments. Black and Wiliam pointed out in 1998 that self-regulated learning should be a primary goal of formative assessment (FA). Since then, a growing body of research on…

This study explored how elementary teachers leveraged and structured student-involved formative assessment to promote metacognition and self-regulation. Research has suggested a connection between formative assessment practices (e.g., self-assessment and peer-assessment) and metacognition. However, this connection has limited empirical support,…

Assessment for learning (AfL) is integral to teaching and learning, and has as its central foci (i) pedagogical intervention in the immediacy of student learning, and (ii) the students' agency in the learning and assessment process. The role that students adopt in AfL is consistent with the idea of self-regulated learning, which involves students…

In an effort to support student agency in assessment, teachers seek to provide detailed instructions and advice in associated assessment task sheets. In this paper, we analyse a sample English assessment task to consider how such assessment design practices might inadvertently create barriers to access and participation. To make our case, we…

Within self-regulated learning, learners exercise agency by setting targets, formatively monitoring progress, and evaluating results in ways which inform their own goal attainment. However, in real-world classroom situations, assessment processes can elicit behaviours that are more ego-protective than growth-oriented. Resistance to teacher…

In this article, the author argues the imperative of critical dialogue between learners and teachers on learners' experiences in the classroom. This dialogical process is called "descriptive feedback"--feedback given by students to teachers on their (students') experiences as learners. Drawing on the literature on feedback, descriptive…

This paper demonstrates that the emphasis on students' socioeconomic status (SES) in research and policy circles in Australia is unwarranted. The bivariate relationships between SES and educational outcomes are only moderate and the effects of SES are quite small when taking into account cognitive ability or prior achievement. These two influences…

National concern regarding the social and emotional wellbeing of children and young people is now strongly reflected in a wide range of Australian policy initiatives. A considerable number of these target schools and point firmly to the role education is perceived to play in promoting student wellbeing. Given that wellbeing can be difficult to…

Conducting classroom-based research can be difficult, often fraught with challenges, analogous to riding a canoe down the rapids. The dynamics of classroom-based research often require flexibility on the parts of both the researcher and school personnel. Classroom-based research is viewed here through a framework of problem-based methodology as…

Research in education draws upon a wide range of epistemological traditions due in part to the wide range of problems that are investigated. While this diversity might be considered a strength of the field, it also makes researchers who work within it vulnerable to being divided into those worth listening to and those who should be ignored by…

While an increasing body of Australian and international research has explored the relationship between media and education, few studies have examined this relationship in the context of early childhood education. This paper contributes to this research gap by reporting on a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of how childcare is represented in 801…

Walking simultaneously in two worlds as an Indigenous researcher, navigating Indigenous and Western epistemologies/methodologies can have its challenges. Indigenous methodologies have become an important element of qualitative research and have been increasingly taken up by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. Indigenous methodologies…

Australian undergraduate programs are implementing curriculum aimed at better preparing graduates to work in culturally diverse settings, but there remains uncertainty over the role of extant student attitudes towards Indigenous Australians. To begin to address this, we obtained baseline data on student attitudes upon entry to tertiary education.…

Whilst early childhood education is regarded as important for young Indigenous Australians and it has been a feature of policy since the 1960s, it does not receive the same attention as compulsory schooling for Indigenous Australian students. A serious lack of large-scale research contributes to the devaluing of early childhood education for young…